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 Spirituality In/Of the Flesh

Robert C. Fuller

in Spirituality in the Flesh: Bodily Sources of Religious Experiences

Metaphor structures a great deal of human thought and knowledge. Most metaphors originate in bodily movement, the contours of our spatial and temporal orientation, and our efforts to manipulate ... More

Metaphor structures a great deal of human thought and knowledge. Most metaphors originate in bodily movement, the contours of our spatial and temporal orientation, and our efforts to manipulate objects in our immediate environment. The final chapter thus explores how these “embodied categories of thought” influence both why and how we think about religious topics (e.g., the body of Christ, the lifting of burdens, finding balance, being touched by Jesus, opening our heart to God). A concluding observation notes that studying the biological sources of religion need not be reductionistic. Indeed, a spirituality in the flesh might lead to a spirituality of the flesh that affirms nature itself as teeming with sacred significance.Less

Joseph Smith, American Culture, and the Origins of Mormonism

Klaus J. Hansen

in Joseph Smith, Jr.: Reappraisals After Two Centuries

This chapter argues why the Mormon prophet's contributions must be seen as the intersecting of American culture and Smith's own particular religious imagination. Comparing Smith to Samuel Johnson and ... More

This chapter argues why the Mormon prophet's contributions must be seen as the intersecting of American culture and Smith's own particular religious imagination. Comparing Smith to Samuel Johnson and Abraham Lincoln, the chapter uses the question of Smith's relationship with his father as a suggestive illustration of how personal loss becomes religious restoration, and a private experience taps universal appeal.Less

“I Love All Men Who Dive”: Herman Melville and Joseph Smith

Richard Dilworth Rust

in Joseph Smith, Jr.: Reappraisals After Two Centuries

This chapter illuminates Smith's religious-making imagination by juxtaposing him with America's greatest myth-making novelist of the 19th century, Herman Melville. Melville revealed a recurrent ... More

This chapter illuminates Smith's religious-making imagination by juxtaposing him with America's greatest myth-making novelist of the 19th century, Herman Melville. Melville revealed a recurrent interest in things Mormon, and the most telling preoccupation that unites them, the chapter finds, is not so much the heights they achieved as successful creators of epic systems, as the depths they plumb as thought-divers, exploring the darkest abysses of human experience and of the tragic universe.Less

Joseph Smith: Prophecy, Process, and Plenitude

Terryl L. Givens

in Joseph Smith, Jr.: Reappraisals After Two Centuries

This chapter connects Joseph Smith's religion-making, in both its scope and its method, to the intellectual revolution called Romanticism. Like all intellectual revolutionaries of that era from ... More

This chapter connects Joseph Smith's religion-making, in both its scope and its method, to the intellectual revolution called Romanticism. Like all intellectual revolutionaries of that era from Malthus to Marx to Darwin, Joseph Smith rearticulated the fundamental vision of his field of influence in terms of contestation, struggle, and dynamism. His collapse of sacred distance, rupturing of the canon, doctrines of pre-existence and theosis, and gestures toward a comprehensive, scriptural Ur-Text—all betoken an emphasis on process over product, and a precarious tension between the searching and certainty that characterized both his personality and the faith he founded.Less

How Do They Stay?

Andrew Greeley and Paul Wink

in The Catholic Revolution: New Wine, Old Wineskins, and the Second Vatican Council

This chapter studies the model of Catholic revolution. Pre-1965, the model was very clear and precise—being Catholic entailed uniform acceptance of ecclesiastical dictate. This model was so hallowed ... More

This chapter studies the model of Catholic revolution. Pre-1965, the model was very clear and precise—being Catholic entailed uniform acceptance of ecclesiastical dictate. This model was so hallowed and so unquestioned that its violation still affronts right-wing Catholics. The model has changed but comprehending the religious dynamics of the change is important. The theory is based upon the works of Weber, Parsons, Geertz, James, and Otto. It contends that religion is originally and primarily behavior that occurs in the dimension of the human personality called the preconscious. Religion originates in hope renewing experiences, which leave back in the imagination, residues that provide explanations for the meaning and purpose of human life. These residues, constituted out of symbols, and experiences combined, constitute religious imagination. Religious imagination variables can function in two ways—”intervening” and “interacting.”Less

Introduction: Male Confessions

in Male Confessions: Intimate Revelations and the Religious Imagination

This book examines confessions by men as a particular style of gendered writing, and the related issues of religiosity and masculinity. From St. Augustine to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Calel Perechodnik, ... More

This book examines confessions by men as a particular style of gendered writing, and the related issues of religiosity and masculinity. From St. Augustine to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Calel Perechodnik, and Donald Boisvert, these men turn to confessional writing as a mode of self-examination, opening their intimate lives and thoughts to the public during particular personal circumstances and in particular moments of history. Confessional writings reflect the sincere attempts of men to lay bare aspects of themselves that would otherwise have remained hidden. In looking at confessiography, the book brings together four areas that are, each for their own reasons, complicated and highly contested: men, religion, gender, and confessions. It argues that through the religious imagination, men are able to talk about their intimate selves, their flaws and sins, without having to condemn themselves entirely or to fear self-erasure.Less

Conclusion: Cloud, Fire, and Beyond

Herbert Robinson Marbury

in Pillars of Cloud and Fire: The Politics of Exodus in African American Biblical Interpretation

This concluding chapter looks at the contemporary world and the ongoing deployment of exodus within a politics of freedom. Black political freedom as a primary goal recedes and becomes but one among ... More

This concluding chapter looks at the contemporary world and the ongoing deployment of exodus within a politics of freedom. Black political freedom as a primary goal recedes and becomes but one among many competing interests that mean fulfillment. Class, gender, sexuality, and theological commitments are among the many social forces that shape the vision of Canaan in the black religious imagination. Each competes with black political freedom as an end in interpreting the exodus story. The politics enacted to pursue each continue to arise in cloud and fire forms as best suited to achieve its ends. The chapter also recounts Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s iconic march in Selma, Alabama in March 1965.Less

Biblical rhetoric: the English nation and national sentiment in the prophetic mode

Patrick Collinson

in This England: Essays on the English Nation and Commonwealth in the Sixteenth Century

When members of the Elizabethan parliaments demanded of their queen that she marry or otherwise determine the succession to the crown, they sometimes spoke with feeling of England. Early modernists ... More

When members of the Elizabethan parliaments demanded of their queen that she marry or otherwise determine the succession to the crown, they sometimes spoke with feeling of England. Early modernists hope that they may at least be permitted to write of ‘patriotism’. Granted that there were many ‘patrias’, from the homestead and parish pump upwards and outwards, this chapter focuses on that species of patriotism which was national sentiment. Where did national patriotic sentiment come from, or, a more modest and manageable question, where and how did it find a voice? This chapter suggests that there was a source of nationhood, the religious imagination, which was the conscience, informed and excited by the Bible.Less

Garden, City, or Wilderness? Landscape and Destiny in the Christian Imagination

Philip Sheldrake

in The Place of Landscape: Concepts, Contexts, Studies

This chapter focuses on the important role played by landscape in the Christian religious imagination. It argues for the ambiguity of “landscape” in the sense that locales like forests, fields, and ... More

This chapter focuses on the important role played by landscape in the Christian religious imagination. It argues for the ambiguity of “landscape” in the sense that locales like forests, fields, and mountains are both geographic realities and imaginary realities. Many locales are considered powerful symbols of fear or desire. According to Simon Schama’s Landscape and Memory, “Landscapes are culture before they are nature; constructs of the imagination projected onto wood and water and rock.” This means that landscape is irreducibly historical since it portrays the material world mediated through human experience. It is also inevitably linked with issues of power because it provides the physical features upon which human beings draw and shape unique identities and distinct worldviews.Less

Outlook: The Power to Name Oneself into Being

in Male Confessions: Intimate Revelations and the Religious Imagination

This book has explored how men present, perform, and reflect upon themselves through confessions. The male confessant invests in particular self-revelations and in particular choices of opening ... More

This book has explored how men present, perform, and reflect upon themselves through confessions. The male confessant invests in particular self-revelations and in particular choices of opening himself up to the public, in a manner that is multivocal, manifold, densely enriched, ambiguous, and at times contradictory. The narrower his presentation of himself (such as Oswald Pohl or Donald Boisvert), the less trustworthy the testimony that his leaves of himself. The deeper the male confessant's presentation of himself (like St. Augustine and Calel Perechodnik), the less solipsistic the male gazing. The book has also argued that the religious imagination can transcend the confines of the mirror's surface and can give rise to an interiority in which the soul is naked in the face of another. It has also discussed moral agency, the (heterosexual) male body, the intimate (female) other, and the “becomingness” through sexual practices, as well as the political dimension of the intersection of masculinity, religion, and nation building, in men's confessions.Less

“Look, My Lord, it Comes”: Uncritical Reading and Johnsonian Communion

Helen Deutsch

in Loving Dr. Johnson

This chapter investigates the desire that fuels Johnsonian commemoration. It suggests that commemoration of Johnson is indeed fueled by a religious imagination of a communion with Johnson's spirit. ... More

This chapter investigates the desire that fuels Johnsonian commemoration. It suggests that commemoration of Johnson is indeed fueled by a religious imagination of a communion with Johnson's spirit. This chapter also argues that criticisms on the commemoration in critical texts as well as in communal rituals and museums hinge on the material remainder of worshipful fantasies of transcendence.Less

The re-analysis of Chihamba, the White Spirit

Richard Werbner

in Anthropology after Gluckman: The Manchester School, colonial and postcolonial transformations

Chapter 9 presents a re-analysis of Victor Turner’s masterpiece, Chihamba, the White Spirit. The ritual drama in Turner’s account is tragic; against that, the re-analysis shows another genre of ... More

Chapter 9 presents a re-analysis of Victor Turner’s masterpiece, Chihamba, the White Spirit. The ritual drama in Turner’s account is tragic; against that, the re-analysis shows another genre of ritual drama: the comedy, teasing and making fun of the subjected, while revelling in Bacchanalian moments and playful sexuality, and while allowing, somewhat muted, alternative fun backstage, gendered for women only. The expressed intent in performance is to bring well-being, personal and communal, for people drawn from many Ndembu villages. Ancestrality is eroticized and conciliated, for the sake of fertility and other mystic benefits, with mysteries of masculinity and femininity under male dominance. Turner relates specific cultural expressions to universals of the human condition, most importantly to the figure he calls ‘the ritual man’; and as the theologian/literary critic, he seeks to convince us of profound truths of the religious imagination. One outcome of the re-analysis is a question: How useful is Turner’s notion of ‘the ritual man’? His appearance may be transfigured, with very different preoccupations in unlike places and ages. The re-analysis undoes Turner’s comparison between the ‘slain god’ in Chihamba and the resurrection in Christianity; instead the argument illuminates the play of magic, tricks and lustful fantasy, as in ancient mystery cults.Less